


Where I'll Spend Through Winter

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bellarke January Joy, F/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 10:32:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17465873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: "So you're still hung up on Clarke," Miller says, all of a sudden.And this, what a blow. Like he'd taken out a switchblade and stabbed Bellamy in the gut: betrayal at dusk, Mount Weather Mart parking lot, story at 11. Bellamy scoffs. Then toes his boot against the sidewalk, and scoffs again."No."Saturday night, a quick run down the hill for movie marathon supplies; lots of teenage UST.





	Where I'll Spend Through Winter

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank Pawprinter (pawprinterfanfic on tumblr) for running Bellarke January Joy, the event for which this fic was written. I've been really enjoying all the gifsets and other art, and bookmarking all the fic to read!
> 
> This fic is inspired by/based on _I'm Sorry I'm Leaving_ by Saves the Day, which I recommend listening to, at least if you're into late 90s acoustic emo. The title is from the same song.
> 
> You can also find me on tumblr [@kinetic-elaboration](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/).

In the moment before Bellamy steps onto the front walk, Clarke reaches for his hand, and all of the streetlamps flick on. He feels her fingertips pass across his palm, and then, just then, the late afternoon falls completely into dusk. In the narrow houses across the street, certain windows glow with a soft, electric light, and above them, the sky is a mellow rose, stained with gray: not yet sunset, but a settling of the sun. The moment is a precipice, like his balance on the last porch step. 

His foot hits the pavement just as Clarke's fingers touch his skin, and she misses. She catches up to him, but then it's just her forefinger wrapped around his forefinger: all they can manage, and still pretend they do not notice, do not care. There’s a nervous uncertainty lodged in his throat as she pulls him along to reach the others.

Octavia is two houses down from the Blakes' already, even with the Monroe place, leading the way down the sharp slope of the hill. Her sneakers clatter against the pavement in an off-rhythm. They’re worn at the edges and splattered with last summer's dirt. She turns around once and puts her hands up to her mouth, like a bullhorn, and calls to them—"You want to make it back before dark? Come on—you're all so slow!"—then twirls around again, her unbuttoned plaid shirt flying behind her like a flag in a breeze of her own making.

Jasper and Monty are behind her, still unhurried, their hands in their pockets, and Miller’s just a step behind them. He's balanced on the edge of the sidewalk, and as Bellamy watches, he lets his arms fall down to his sides again and jumps off the curb into the street. He takes his hat out of his pocket and pulls it down over his ears.

Clarke, her finger still wrapped around his finger, the expression on her face still utterly unreadable, her presence next to him not quite expected, and not quite meaningful, tips back her head and looks at the sky as if searching out another gust of rain. 

 

* 

 

While Miller and Monty debate which of two classic sci-fi movies the group should watch first, Clarke stands in the open doorway to the balcony and breathes in the clear, cool air that yesterday's rain has brought in. Now, at last, it feels like autumn has arrived.

She's been at the Blakes for almost an hour now and nothing has been decided, nothing begun, but that's all right. Miller's her ride home, so she's here while she's here, gone when she's gone. She could march over and grab the DVDs out of their hands, shuffle them behind her back, solve their argument with the undeniable power of chance, but she doesn't care enough. She's much too concerned with testing the feel of the cool balcony floor with her toes.

In the living room, the others have been occasionally pacing, sometimes slipping down into the couch cushions, sometimes perching on the edge of the overstuffed chair. Jasper's lying on the floor, at the moment, solving a Rubik's cube that he holds above his head. Off at the back of the apartment, vague noises echo, of rummaging, cabinet doors opening and closing, while Octavia solves the insurmountable problem of the snacks.

"You know that if you don't just pick something, we'll only have time to watch one," Bellamy says. He sounds gruff and irritated and a little fed up, and he has the frustrated air of an animal, caught in a cage. 

Clarke finds herself quietly intrigued.

He’s stuck himself in the space between the doorway and the bookshelf, staring quietly at Clarke as if he’s subtle, while she pretends that she is not being watched. Recently, she's come to memorize the breadth of his shoulders, this new sturdiness about him, which he certainly did not have when they were fourteen and had just met, but which has come about him slowly and unexpectedly over the last four years. Sometimes it surprises her still. Sometimes his hands surprise her, the gentle-giant size of them, or his voice, like now, with its rumbling depths.

She thinks over these details at night, in the stillness, or sometimes in groups, like this, when she's bored. She does not romanticize him. She analyzes him. She pretends she's a scientist; she plays tricks on herself.

They hear a slide of sockfeet skittering over wood floors, and Octavia coasts into view beside her brother. “Red alert," she announces in a breathless voice, and all eyes turn to her at once.

"Captain, I'm prepared to go down with this ship," Jasper boasts, and sets the Rubik's cube, properly colored, down among the mess on the coffee table.

"What is it now?" Miller asks, and Octavia shoots him a dagger glare.

"No chips," she says. "We can't do a movie marathon without barbecue chips."

No one else sees the dire nature of the problem, except for Clarke, who deeply desires the burnt taste of Octavia’s favorite off-brand potato chips—the ones Clarke first tasted sophomore year, standing in the middle of the Blakes' kitchen with O, while Bellamy tried not to burn a real meal on the stove—but she holds her tongue.

Octavia flicks her eyes from face to face. 

"They sell them at Mount Weather Mart," she says.

No one answers.

"It's just down the hill and across the street," she says.

No one answers this either, at first, until Miller asks, "Do you want me to just drive down and grab them?"

Octavia shakes her head. "You'll get the wrong ones. It's not worth driving. Let's just walk down together, get, like, four bags, and walk back up."

Bellamy maintains that four bags is excessive, but neither he, nor anyone else, argues any farther than that. Clarke shuts the balcony door with a light, decisive click, and starts looking around for her shoes. 

 

*

 

Friday's rains have left large puddles in the uneven hollows of the ground. Clarke skirts one, a large, shallow spill of water at the end of the street, where the sidewalk flattens out into the road, and in the same motion pushes Bellamy almost onto the squelching wet grass of one of his neighbor's lawns. She drops his hand, too, and he immediately shoves it into his jacket pocket, an unfair heat rising up to the surface of his skin.

"Careful, princess," he warns. "Don't want to get your feet wet."

Clarke glares at him and crosses her arms against her chest. The others are waiting just beyond, ready to cross the street and then head down a sharper slope in the hill, at the bottom of which they'll hit the main road through town. On the other side is the Mount Weather Mart gas station and convenience store, with the good, cheap, salty chips Octavia loves.

"Don't worry," Clarke says, "I left my fancy glass slippers at home."

She makes this sound like an insult, her words sharp like fangs, and he wonders what he was doing calling her _princess_ at all, what made that old name rise to the tip of his tongue. It was what he called her when she first transferred to his school at the beginning of ninth grade. Princess Clarke Griffin from the private school at the north end of town. Unbearable, bossy, impossible Princess Clarke. Beautiful, smart, aloof Princess Clarke.

She only looked the part once, at the ninth-grade homecoming dance. They went as a group. He felt awkward in his suit, the shoes that he'd bought for his cousin's wedding and already outgrown. She was radiant in a red dress and heels, even more so when she ditched them three songs in, dancing in her bare feet in the middle of the gym, in the too-dim light, among an excess of red and white balloons.

Maybe he's been in love with her since then. Maybe it's taken him all this time just to admit it to himself.

He takes his hands out of his pockets and rolls his eyes, and out of the corner of his vision, catches her smiling, biting down on her lip like this is some secret they have shared. Octavia is swinging absently around one of the streetlamps, waiting for the traffic lights to change. When they do, she and Jasper lead the way down the hill, Bellamy and Monty just behind, Clarke and Miller at the very end of the line. The ground slopes sharply away beneath their feet. 

 

*

 

The bell above the door rings as they crowd in, all at once, then quickly lose each other in the narrow, well-stocked aisles. Clarke finds herself among the snack-food, looking at boxes of mini powdered doughnuts. The fluorescent lights above her are sharp and fake, a high contrast to the muted late-September light outside. They shine off the freshly-waxed floor. Clarke can hear Jasper and Monty in the next aisle over, arguing out the merits of different carbonated drinks.

She notices Bellamy wandering down the other end of her aisle, but not when he grabs for the doughnuts at the same time as she does, so that suddenly her hand is crushing the thin plastic window at the top of the box, and Bellamy's hand is pressing against hers.

Last summer, some time at the end of July, or early August, he came over and they lounged on the old beat-up couch in the Griffins' basement, watching an old tape in the only still-working VHS player in the house. His arm was around her. After the tape spooled out and the screen turned blue, she turned on her side, in the curve of space between his arm and his chest, and stretched up until they were almost nose to nose, and he pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. And that, that moment could have been something. 

Or the first weekend of the school year, hanging out at Miller's house on Friday night, on the back porch with the radio playing. It still felt like summer. He let him dance with her, his hands at her waist, strong and wide just above her hips. The sun had already set. They were alone. The laugher of the others was audible, but only barely, through the wall. When the music reached a crescendo of twisting, twirling, guitar, they found themselves so wrapped up in each other that even her mouth had found his mouth: a kiss so messy and awkward and quick that it feels, looking back, more like an almost-kiss: an opportunity not yet fully seized. 

Or right now, in the aisle of Mount Weather Mart on a Saturday, the heat of his hand on her hand. 

He's been staring at her too long, and she at him, but when he pulls his hand away, the crest of feeling quickly wanes. Clarke blinks her eyes fast and shakes her head. She glances up and sees Bellamy half-smiling, his eyes flicked up toward the ceiling like he's laughing at himself.

"These are terrible anyway," she says.

"Oh yeah," he answers, still looking up. "Octavia's chips are bad enough."

 

*

 

Because the line is long and the store is crowded, Bellamy waits outside with Miller while the others pay for their food. He leans against the side of the building with his head against the cold, abrasive surface of the brick, and watches as cars pull up to the gas pumps, one by one.

Miller's leaning forward with his hands in his pockets, reading the headlines through the glass of the newspaper kiosk. "So you're still hung up on Clarke," he says, all of a sudden, as if this were front page news.

And this, what a blow. Like he'd taken out a switchblade and stabbed Bellamy in the gut: betrayal at dusk, Mount Weather Mart parking lot, story at 11. He scoffs. Then toes his boot against the sidewalk, and scoffs again.

" _No_."

Miller pulls his hat down so low it's almost covering his eyes, then pushes it up again, just a bit. He’s always doing that: perfecting his look. "Sure. I'm just telling you, I've known her for a long time. She's never been in a relationship that lasted more than three months. And that was with a girl she met the summer after freshman year. At camp."

He says this last as if it has significance, but Bellamy's brows only furrow.

"Built in expiration date," Miller explains, and Bellamy makes a low sound of understanding, which is lost under the vroom of exhaust as a rickety truck turns and pulls out of the lot.

"What I mean," Miller adds, "is that she doesn't do the relationship thing."

Bellamy’s shoulders stiffen. "Neither do I."

"That's because you don't do _anything_."

This, he thinks, is not quite true. There was Gina, for a full five months, the second half of freshman year; and Roma, who made out with him in the backseat of her parents' car after prom last spring. But if Miller means that Bellamy _does_ seem the relationship type, underneath his impatience, and his occasional flares of anger; if he means that Bellamy's not yearning for a moment as fleeting as that one on Miller's porch, two weeks ago, the one Miller doesn't know about, and never will; if he means that Bellamy _is_ yearning, and waiting, a small, searching feeling coiling up inside him all the time—then he's not wrong.

“She’s impulsive, is the thing,” Miller’s saying. “She just wants to have the experience, and then move on."

 

*

 

The song—last summer's anthem, the one that still makes Clarke think about heat waves and ocean waves and sand between her toes—comes on over the radio just as the cashier is handing O back her change. It sounds tinny and small, as distant as the dying season itself. Jasper immediately starts humming along, though, and the impulse is contagious. It spreads to Monty first, and then to Octavia, mutating along the way into singing, and then to Clarke herself; the chorus takes off with a yell and a great burst of feeling, just as they're ready to burst through the front doors. By now they’re practically shouting, not caring who's watching them or what sort of looks they're getting, four teenagers laughing over their own heartfelt, longing, passionate cries. Yes, Clarke feels everything now. She feels a sudden rush of desire and love. 

Bellamy and Miller are waiting for them by the door, and as she tumbles by them, she takes Bellamy's hand and pulls him along. They are half-running, half-dancing across the parking lot. Clarke spins sometimes to watch him, glancing back over her shoulder at the parking lot ahead. He almost trips over his own feet, trying to catch up with her, and Jasper is almost to the crosswalk now, and she and Bellamy are falling behind. A few uneven words waft back to them, Monty's wavering voice and maybe O's, but Clarke's lost the thread of the tune. She twirls forward again, thinking of nothing but catching up to the group, thinking of nothing but the rhythm of their feet on the blacktop, scattering, thumping down flat-footed and hard, racing for the sake of racing; she’s breathing so deep her lungs could burst.

They don't make it to the crosswalk in time. The light switches to yellow just as Miller takes off from the sidewalk's edge, and it's already blasting a bright red as she and Bellamy skitter to a halt on the pavement. She takes a deep breath and doesn't let go of his hand. All of a sudden, she feels silly, not sure what has come over her— 

 

*

 

For some reason, his friends leave the Mart singing and dancing, which Bellamy doesn't even try to understand. He lets himself get caught up in the whirlwind of it instead: Clarke's hair flowing behind her as she runs, his own legs tangling together, tripping him up as he jumps off from the sidewalk after her. Some feeling, like anticipation or want, a certain light freedom like autumn wind, is lifting him up, up and to a cliff’s edge, beyond which he cannot see but only feel. And he feels weightless.

He and Clarke stop up short just ahead of the crosswalk, as the light turns red and the traffic lurches out in front of them, cutting them off. Their friends are already heading up the hill. Possibly, they are still singing. He doesn't care. Clarke's palm is sweaty in his, and he can feel her shifting her weight between her feet. She looks up at him abashed and maybe guilty, gives a tiny little shrug, but he can hardly answer. He hasn't come down yet. He hasn't come down. 

And _oh_. 

He'd like to take her in his arms. He'd spin her around, right off her feet, right there in the middle of the sidewalk, then press her up against the telephone pole. Her hands touching his face, her palms cold. He'd grab at her jacket and, in a confusion of legs, walking into each other, over each other, her feet would squash his feet. In their hurry, in their desperation and their need, she'd bite his lip. His fingers would catch on the fabric of her shirt. She'd push him back into the parking lot again and crush him against one of the parked cars; they'd scramble onto the hood, eyes closed, blind, feeling out each other, teeth knocking against each other's teeth. Maybe he would taste blood, unsure if it was hers or his own. Maybe her tongue would creep over the wound, find his tongue, wet and warm and searching, as her back arched, as he rolled her over onto the windshield, and the windshield wipers dug into her back.

What brings him home first is a breeze, too cold on his skin, and then her hand squeezing his, telling him the light is green now, telling him it's time to go. 

 

*

 

They are halfway up the hill before Clarke notices the sun has set. The sky has turned a deep blue, and only the streetlamps, and the glow from the windows of the buildings they pass, light their way. Neither of them has said a word since they crossed the street. She bites her lip to keep her silence, because she knows that if she were to speak, she would say something stupid, like, "Do you think we should just, maybe, go out sometime?" 

And where would that lead? A few dates, a few kisses, a few weeks. Maybe a few months. She does not bother to consider the possible reactions of their friends—Miller would tell her that he saw this coming; Octavia would feign disgust—because the only real question is that of Bellamy himself.

Bellamy, who she knows so achingly well, and also, in moments like these, not at all.

The answer is, perhaps, this: a blur of attraction. A blur of wanting him, thinking about him, remembering him like a sound she can't stop hearing, a tune she can't get out of her head. The sensation of her name being called, from somewhere behind her, at odd, inconvenient hours of the day. A constant awareness of the distances between them, at any given time. They'd still talk like they do now but this time curled up around each other, and she would kiss him, not like at Miller's party but in the soft, aching way she likes to imagine, and the act of kissing his cheeks and his neck and his nose, and his mouth, would not get old or tiresome or boring. 

Until one day it would. Maybe. For one of them, or both.

Everything must end or it must go on forever, and she's not sure which possibility scares her more.

They reach the top of the hill, walking slowly so that Clarke feels each step, aching up her legs, and see that in the middle of the street, the lights on the second floor of the Blakes' house are on. 

“Guess we’re late,” Bellamy says.

Clarke nods. A taut silence grips her, as if she only just now came to understand that they’re alone.

And if it's only a few months?

He's so close, his arm brushing up against her arm. Those few months could be an unforgettable sort. And later, after she’s jumped ship, after she’s lit out for the territory ahead of the rest, after she’s bailed out the way she always seems to do, she’ll take the memory of them with her like a souvenir, pull it out and bask in it when she wants to live again in that moment when her finger linked around his finger, and the air smelled of wet earth and clear rain, and the streetlamps were just coming on.

 

*

 

Bellamy's not sure what time it is, but it's late and it's dark and there are clouds wavering over the moon, and he's standing on his front porch with Clarke, staring at her profile while they listen to the buzz of the porchlight above their heads. The movie's over now and Jasper and Monty have stumbled on home. Miller's still upstairs, with O, having a conversation in the kitchen. He said he'd be down in a moment, and maybe that was really the truth, at the time. Clarke has her hands in her jacket pockets, and she's looking mostly over Bellamy's shoulder, out into the darkness of the lawn. 

"So," she says, long after the silence has stretched beyond uncertainty. He's at ease now, waiting here. He said he'd walk her down because it would be, of course, only a moment, because she looked impatient to leave. Now he's not sure if he should walk her down the porch steps, too. Now she's flicked her gaze to him and he's not sure what he should say.

"So," he echoes.

"I had a good time," Clarke tells him, but he's not really hearing the words, just the quiet, confessional sound of her voice. She steps a little closer, and he wonders if this is a tactic, because Clarke at her worst is all tactic, all schemes. Then she adds, "That sounds dumb," and shifts her weight to her back foot, and he smiles.

"If Miller forgets what he's supposed to be doing and ends up falling asleep on my couch, I'll steal his keys and drive you home myself."

"Oh, he's already forgotten." She half-smiles, half-shrugs, and as her shoulder falls, she lets her gaze fall, too, down to their shoes. "It's all right, though."

Should he just say it? Should he just ask?

He pretends he's stepping forward only so he can lean against the railing. So casual. Not thinking at all about rolling around, wild and with abandon, on top of her, beneath her, around and around in the still-wet grass and the mud.

"Look," he starts, and, perhaps to cut him off, perhaps by chance, at nearly the same time, Clarke says: 

"Maybe I should wait in the car."

She looks apologetic, or uncertain, and though he doesn't mean it, the smile that he gives her feels wistful and sad. "Yeah, all right."

But she seems to hesitate on the top porch step, just on the verge of walking away, so he reaches for her arm and waits for her to turn around. She does, and he is almost brave. Then everything he wants catches on his breath, and the most he can do is lean down and gently kiss her on the cheek. The most he can do. Yet it feels like so much, at the time.

 

*

 

The inside of Miller's car is cold, and much too silent. Here in the in-between time, waiting to be somewhere other than she is, waiting to know when she can finally stop waiting, Clarke feels not like herself but like a person observing herself from a distance. She rubs her hands together and shoves them between her knees. A shiver runs along her skin. The day has felt like autumn but now, with the door closed and the window up, staring at the dashboard and the flat, gray buttons of the radio, even that season could be slipping away from her: autumn turned to winter, rain to snow. This liminal space has stretched too wide. She's fallen into it, and here she'll stay.

She closes her eyes. 

Here she'll stay, through the long winter, slowly buried in snow.

Or: Bellamy will run down the porch steps and across the lawn, his shoes squelching through the mud. He'll pull open the car door. He'll duck inside. Then she'll know that nothing is over, nothing is lost, because he'll press her back against the car seat, his fingers tugging at her hair, his mouth open to her mouth. She will grab at him like she needs him, and a heat will flare in every spot that skin touches skin or body presses, arches, curls against body, where lips search out lips. It is not done. She does not know what she's doing, but this is not done, or he would not have hesitated when he kissed her cheek, like he thought perhaps she would angle her head to the side and meet him. And she still might.

 _You don't know what this is_ , she whispers to herself, and how true, and how utterly irrelevant, when, if she concentrates well enough, she can almost hear him, whispering indecipherable words. How little it means to be sure of the future. How little she cares.

Maybe he's still on the porch. Maybe it's she who should be opening the door and running to him. 

But she doesn't open her eyes. She's not ready, yet, to know. 

 

 

 

January 13-15, 2019 / Edited January 17-19, 2019


End file.
